After an almost five-year journey to the solar system’s largest planet, NASA's Juno spacecraft successfully entered Jupiter’s orbit during a 35-minute engine burn. At the time of its closest approach (called perijove), Juno was at about 4,300 km above the planet’s cloud tops.

Facts about Juno

Juno was launched in 2011 on a mission to study Jupiter’s composition and evolution. It’s the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter since Galileo. Juno spacecraft successfully entered Jupiter’s orbit recently, after a five year journey.

The primary goals of the $1.1 billion mission are to find out whether Jupiter has a solid core, and whether there is water in the planet’s atmosphere — something that may not only provide vital clues to how the planet formed and evolved, but also to how the solar system we live in came into existence.

At the end of its mission, Juno will dive into Jupiter’s atmosphere and burn up — a “deorbit” maneuver that is necessary to ensure that it does not crash into and contaminate the Jovian moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

Juno became the first spacecraft to cruise this far out into the solar system powered solely by the sun, beating Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft. A trio of massive solar wings sticks out from Juno like blades from a windmill, generating 500 watts of power to run its nine instruments.

Juno, built by Lockheed Martin, is an armored spacecraft – its computer and electronics are locked in a titanium vault to shield them from harmful radiation. Even so, Juno is expected to get blasted with radiation equal to more than 100 million dental X-rays during the mission.